User Feedback :: Black screen without failsafe



I think this is only the case of not cleanly rebooting.
So when your machine really crashed and you need to push the reset/power
button to restart the machine. In this case files and filesystems can be corrupt.
I've seen messages that e2fsck needed to be run on (linux)filesystems due because filesystems weren't cleanly unmounted. Normally a e2fsck solves the problems for the filesystem.
Some files, which were written during the crash could be corrupted.
Normally you should see an error during boot if you need to run e2fsck somewhere at the end...
Boot with a LiveCD and "e2fsck /dev/(linux filesystem)".
I do not think you need to run this command on a fat32/ntfs filesystem.

It never crashes, just gives black screen so I can't shut down cleanly.

I'll give it another go.

If you do not shutdown/reboot cleanly, so filesystems are unmounted, it could lead to problems...
If you use frugal there should not be too many problems.. There is nothing written on disk...
On hd-installs there could be problems like the things I mentioned earlier..

Can you get to another console. I do not know the right combination, but it is something combination of CRTL and/or ALT and/or SHIFT with the F1 or 1 button. Normally you have a X and a ascii console... The ascii console is the one you see while booting.
Some errors can be seen there.. Also an CRTL^C can be used to exit X.

Found the problem.

Without failsafe DSL tries to use my PCI gfx card. But I have set the agp as the primary in the bios so the PCI card doesn't work (only works when its set to primary).

I can boot fine when I set the PCI to primary in bios and disable agp.

Is it the kernel that tries to use the PCI as primary?

ok... Happy you found the problem...
Something that springs to mind is the noagp option for starting.
Are you using a LiveCD, Frugal or hd install?

Is /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig the noagp option is checked.
The code which is run if it is not found is:
Code Sample
stringinfile "AGP" "/proc/pci" 2>/dev/null && { modprobe agpgart || modprobe agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1; } >/dev/null 2>&1 && echo " ${YELLOW}AGP bridge${GRE
EN} detected."

stringinfile does a grep on AGP in /proc/pci and returns 0 if it is found
You might want to check AGP in /proc/pci
You might also want to check the other command:
"modprobe agpgart" and "modprobe agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1".
Maybe they give errors....
What failsafe exaclty does I do not know....

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